The most well known and popular ancient Chinese book for management could be “Sun Zi – the Art of War” 孙子兵法. It is widely used not only for business but also for military education as it is one of the “must read” books at West point, USA.
If one only knows the Art of War and has no knowledge about other ancient Chinese philosophies, he or she is like a blind touching an elephant and trying to estimate the size of the elephant. According to Shima Qian’s “Shi Ji” (The Record of Great Historian in Han Dynasty), Sun Zi is not listed as the top 6 philosophy groups (Confucianism, Legalism, Daoism, Mohism, Ying-Yang and Logicians) in the Hundred Schools of Thought. However, it was mentioned as one of the top 10 philosophy groups. There is also a saying; Sun Zi got his war theories and principles from Laozi – the master of Dao philosophy.
If we dated back our modernization to Industrial Revolution, then the western modern management and business practice can also be traced back to 18th century. However, in pursuit of market, profit, economies of scale, the modern management principles (leading planning, organizing and controlling) and decision makings are unable to move away from these objectives. Because of this narrow view, it is no surprise that we only concentrate on Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1764), as a productivity tool. And few can remember another Adam Smith book entitled Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759).
Long ago, Adam Smith had reminded us about the negative effect of commercialisation, capitalism and economic development. As you may have notice, Moral sentiments was published first before the Wealth of Nations. We seem to look at business excellence and development from the up side down perspective.
The world is changing and moving rapidly in the age of information technology. But no matter what we are heading, we cannot ignore the fundamentals and traditions as mentioned in Moral sentiments or even to ancient European and Asian philosophers. This leads to the recent surge of ancient philosophies in Christian, Islamic, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, Jain and Humanist traditions. Yale University is currently engaging in a project and will hold a global conference in 2013 on practical wisdom for management from ancient spiritual and philosophical traditions.
The discovery of Americas and the emergency of USA as an economic superpower have changed the world and make people in full confidence of business excellence in profit maximization. However, with hyperinflation, great depression in 1930s, and several financial crises in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, no wonder we have to cast doubts on free economy, especially the emphasis on profit over value. In years to come, the American influence in business will have to be reduced and a multi-player business environment will emerge. This will lead to inputs and considerations of the ancient spiritual and philosophies.
The rapid economic development in China has seen besides creating wealth, also witnessing the surge of the interest of Jing Dian (经典) learning. Chinese businessmen and government officials are spending high fees attending Jing dian courses by Peking University, Fudan universities etc. On 30 June 2010, Peking University announced the founding of a Confucianism Research Institute to promote academic studies about traditional culture and explore the contemporary significance of Confucian studies. This low profile and small scale project is approaching the Chinese traditions in a deeper way rather than the popular and better known Confucius Institutes sponsored by Chinese government.
However, we cannot ignore the significance of the Research Institute (or other similar researches in other Chinese philosophies, especially Daoism and Buddhism). The long term effect has yet to be known. On the other way, to a lesser extent, some Chinese businessmen and officials have even gone one step further to learn and practice the stricter teaching of Chinese Buddhism, Confucius, Daoism, etc. and apply these principles in their daily life and business practices.
How can we learn from the past, from the past wisdom of great Chinese traditions?
Geoffrey James in his book, “Success Secrets from Silicon Valley – How to make your teams more effective”, has divided business organizations into traditional and Silicon Valley businesses. The Silicon Valley mindset are Business is an ecosystem, not a battlefield; Corporations are communities, not machines; Management is service, not control; Employees are peers, not children; Motivate with vision, not fear; Change is growth, not pain; Computers are servants, not masters; Work is play, not toil.
Doing the thing right? Traditional business model is adopting the practices of industrial revolution and placing market, productivity, efficiency and profit ahead of environment, communities and humanity. They just want to improve their existing operating system, keep doing and perfecting the same old things.
Doing the right thing? Silicon Valley business emphasizes more on harmony in development, sustainable development, slower growth and corporate social responsibility.
This approach is closer to the practical wisdom of ancient traditions.
Thursday, 11 November 2010
Sunday, 7 November 2010
Knowledge and intelligence
In the book of “The Analects” (论语) written by Confucius's pupils after his death, there are some interesting discussions about knowledge and intelligence.
In the chapter of Wei Zheng (为政, the practice of government), it describes the relationship between knowledge and honesty as:
“知之为知之，不知为不知，是知也。“
“You know mean you know, don’t know mean don’ know. This is called understanding.”
Knowledge is objective understanding, i.e. knowledge can be divided and categorised into many different fields. However, intelligence is subjective application of our acquired knowledge. To distinguish knowledge and intelligence, we have to use the guideline of honesty. What we know is limited to what we learn and we should not pretend we know the unknown. Only with honesty, we can move forward to study, to learn and to make decision correctly.
The action to acknowledge that we don’t know or don’t understand the situation is expressed by honesty. However, one will need the gut to admit that we don’t know the unknown.
Man has to refresh, to find out the known and unknown and than progress to practice the correct way (行) of learning. This is called “知行合一zhi xing he yi” knowing (the information/knowledge) and practising (using intelligence to make decision) in one harmony. And this is the gateway to transform knowledge into intelligence.
In the knowledge economy, the danger is information overloaded. There are too many information, and it can true, half true and not true. A decision based on wrong or incomplete information will certainly lead to bad decision. Therefore, we have admitted our ignorance as the first step towards the correct way of studying.
The same chapter (Wei Zheng) further explains that to understand the current/new event, one will have to recall the past knowledge:
“温故而知新， 可以为师“
“Refresh old memory/knowledge so as to understand the new happening. By doing so, one can be a (master) teacher. “
The accumulation and progress of our intelligence is based on our ability to recall, refresh and understand old knowledge. Take the nature for example, it is so complicated and confusing and human beings are so afraid of it. However, through experience, observation, and analysis, we can summary the pattern of changes and come out logical rules and principles to predict the future happening.
This results to “one know what is happening in advance” “先见之明 xian jian zhi ming”. Every generation has its trend. What is fashion now may not be considered as trendy or modern in future. Observation of past happenings will lead to our understanding of the future happenings.
The real innovation, in fact, is originated from our tradition. The further we trace our tradition; the chances of us creating innovation are higher. However, any deep understanding of tradition must have rich inner knowledge of the past; again it will have to involve group and team work to build up the “tradition” knowledge. Innovation, hence, is a combination of individual intelligence.
In the chapter of Wei Zheng (为政, the practice of government), it describes the relationship between knowledge and honesty as:
“知之为知之，不知为不知，是知也。“
“You know mean you know, don’t know mean don’ know. This is called understanding.”
Knowledge is objective understanding, i.e. knowledge can be divided and categorised into many different fields. However, intelligence is subjective application of our acquired knowledge. To distinguish knowledge and intelligence, we have to use the guideline of honesty. What we know is limited to what we learn and we should not pretend we know the unknown. Only with honesty, we can move forward to study, to learn and to make decision correctly.
The action to acknowledge that we don’t know or don’t understand the situation is expressed by honesty. However, one will need the gut to admit that we don’t know the unknown.
Man has to refresh, to find out the known and unknown and than progress to practice the correct way (行) of learning. This is called “知行合一zhi xing he yi” knowing (the information/knowledge) and practising (using intelligence to make decision) in one harmony. And this is the gateway to transform knowledge into intelligence.
In the knowledge economy, the danger is information overloaded. There are too many information, and it can true, half true and not true. A decision based on wrong or incomplete information will certainly lead to bad decision. Therefore, we have admitted our ignorance as the first step towards the correct way of studying.
The same chapter (Wei Zheng) further explains that to understand the current/new event, one will have to recall the past knowledge:
“温故而知新， 可以为师“
“Refresh old memory/knowledge so as to understand the new happening. By doing so, one can be a (master) teacher. “
The accumulation and progress of our intelligence is based on our ability to recall, refresh and understand old knowledge. Take the nature for example, it is so complicated and confusing and human beings are so afraid of it. However, through experience, observation, and analysis, we can summary the pattern of changes and come out logical rules and principles to predict the future happening.
This results to “one know what is happening in advance” “先见之明 xian jian zhi ming”. Every generation has its trend. What is fashion now may not be considered as trendy or modern in future. Observation of past happenings will lead to our understanding of the future happenings.
The real innovation, in fact, is originated from our tradition. The further we trace our tradition; the chances of us creating innovation are higher. However, any deep understanding of tradition must have rich inner knowledge of the past; again it will have to involve group and team work to build up the “tradition” knowledge. Innovation, hence, is a combination of individual intelligence.
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